Rivas finished fifth this year, but that was due to being part of the break which finished 15+ minutes ahead of the pack. Unlikely to repeat.

Sepulveda might be good for a stage win. Colorado has the pedigree, but is getting a bit long in the tooth and while Sanchez and Cruz are the best climbers from the Dominican Republic, they are out of their depth here.

The route of the Vuelta al Táchira 2019, which was submitted to a unilateral decision of the Ministry of Sport, of the government of the Psuv in 8 stages, subtracting 2 from the usual 10 of the Andean Tour, is now final.

They had been umming and ahhhing about it for a while.

Finances (or lack of it) is of course the reason. They had hoped to get private sponsorship in place for the other two stages, but nothing came of it.

These two have been competing at the just finished Vuelta a Costa Rica with contrasting fortunes.

Strongman were very prominent and showed good strength in depth picking up three stage wins with three different riders - Cano, Canaveral and Quiroz. Those same three all finished in the top-six in GC, but lost out on the big prize after suffering on the Queen stage somewhat.

Safut Peteroa didn't do quite as well. Their best known rider (to me anyway) is Flores who ended up 17th in the GC, but over 50 minutes down on the winner. Now he's done well at Tachira before so he probably is just keeping his powder dry in preparation for his main target.

Affected by a disease that has kept him inactive since last November, the Venezuelan cyclist Pedro Gutiérrez was forced to cancel his participation in the 54th edition of the Vuelta al Táchira by bicycle and with that he was prevented from defending the title he had reached the previous year.

"When I returned from China (in mid-November) I started having skin problems, an allergy, and I had to go to the doctor, who told me that it was a kind of food poisoning that consumed there,"

"He could not train, because the doctor recommended not having sun exposure. Then, without being able to train, it was impossible to do a good preparation for the Vuelta, "

He'll actually now be riding the Vuelta with Venezuela País de Futuro, which going by the name you'd think would be a devo team of sorts, but Monsalve and Ubeto have ridden for them in the past year or two. In fact, going by that interview, the recently banned Ubeto is still the team manager.

One thing I noticed yesterday was the lack of local tweetage about the race in comparison to previous years. Even this morning (with a cursory look admittedly), there are only a couple of pictures and no video of the sprint. In past editions there was almost too much twitter activity. If you followed the race via the official hashtag you were overwhelmed with info and thus had to be a bit more selective.

We'll see how it goes over the rest of the race, but I'm sure this isn't down to the locals not being cycling fans anymore. Some other reason springs to mind.